Susan Bedsow Horgan Named ONE LIFE TO LIVE Head Writer

Susan Bedsow Horgan has signed on to become head writer of The Online Network's new ONE LIFE TO LIVE. Prospect Park, the company behind TOLN, confirmed earlier this week the return of ONE LIFE TO LIVE and ALL MY CHILDREN, with production on both scheduled to begin in February. Bedsow just made the deal a few days ago. Thom Racina will join her as co-head writer.

Bedsow Horgan attended UC-Irvine as a Drama major and was a professional actress for 10 years before her career in soaps started. Her very first job was a short-term gig in 1976 as a production secretary for ONE LIFE TO LIVE. She was hired by GUIDING LIGHT in October 1977 and helped the show expand from 30 to 60 minutes a day. She moved up to Associate Producer and eventually transitioned to the same role for AS THE WORLD TURNS.

She would spend 20 years in daytime television as a writer and a producer. She was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award in 1986 for for her writing work on the AS THE WORLD TURNS writing team (she was the head writer of AS THE WORLD TURNS from 1984-1985, the time when Bob and Kim were reunited and married). She won an Emmy in 1994 as part of ONE LIFE TO LIVE's Outstanding Drama Series Writing Team (she was writing for the show when the character of Todd, now on GENERAL HOSPITAL, was introduced). Her daytime career culminated as executive producer of ONE LIFE TO LIVE in the mid-1990s.

Bedsow Horgan left daytime after being let go from ONE LIFE TO LIVE in 1996, becoming a life coach.

She's married to Patrick Horgan, who played roles in THE DOCTORS, AS THE WORLD TURNS, ONE LIFE TO LIVE, RYAN'S HOPE and GUIDING LIGHT.

17 comments:

Oh God, she was was EP of OLTL during the awful Men of 21 story in 96. Carlo Hesser brain washes Viki to shoot her son, Kevin. Bo goes undercover as a Terrorist Bomb expert. Hopefully her writing has improved. I was hoping RonC would be writing both GH and OLTL.

Oops I forgot to give the name of my soap in case someone would be willing to help me get it started...it's called Our Private Lives(working title)!! I have many others, but this is the one I keep going back too!

Glad to hear this. The oltl reboot will be made or broken by the writing and i was sweating bullets over who would be chosen. I'm resting easy now. OLTL will be in good hands. Plus Agnes Nixon is taking an active role in consulting and i hear Carlivati may be doing some consulting as well. If they couldn't get Malone and/or Griffith, this is the best possible choice.

Roger when you commented the other day that you knew who some of the writers were going to be and that fans would be happy were you only referring to OLTL? Because word is Marlene McPherson is getting AMC and that is not good.

Hi Amanda, I was talking about all the hires I knew of at the time (Susie, Thom) and that didn't include any AMC writers. I haven't heard about Marlene yet. It's very fascinating to see all this come together. I kind of wish it was all being taped for a future weeklong PBS special about the returns of AMC and OLTL.

Susan Bedsow Horgan is a brilliant writer and producer. I first "met" her over the phone in 1975 when she used her stage name of Susan Merrill-Taylor, and would call the office of CBS News MAGAZINE to speak to her friend, Patti. One day, she dropped by the office to have lunch with Patti. Patti introduced the two of us. Susan was very charming.

About ten years later, I met Garin Wolf at a Forest Hills health club. He was writing for "As the World Turns" at the time. We were chatting about various cast members and staff from ATWT. Garin, too, was very impressed by Susan.

I recently sent Susan a congratulatory message via her blog, and an update as to what I'm doing now.